Even though Dr Kelley Ross is very critical of Hegel, still in his comments he made a very important remark about what Hegel was trying to do--to finish what Socrates had started. [I only have a few minutes on this friend's computer so I can not expand but to me it seems crystal clear]. Dr Ross [the Kant Fries School] would not have put it in that way but I am sure that is what he meant.


Since i seem to have a few more minutes let me just add that Socrates was expert in finding the hidden contradictions in every single position offered by the people he was talking with. But not in a systematic way.  But he did have a system --or at least that is what we see in the dialogues of Plato. So Hegel was making Socrates into a system and also certainly held from the Neo Platonic View in which the Good emanates the Logos which emanates Nature.[It is the same system as the Arizal except the Ari goes into more details.

Another thing about Bava Kama. An ox [tam] gores another. Each are worth 200. Since it is the first time you the owner of the gored ox gets 100. If the ox does it again to another ox it the two owners get 50 and 50. If again then 50, 25 and 25. So my question is what happens then next time? I can not figure out what kind of progression the mishna is getting at.

L.T Hobhouse wrote a scaling critique on Hegel's idea of the State. But looking at what he wrote before World War I you can see he was leaning towards socialism. This seems to me to be the case with Bradly also--the most famous Hegel scholar before WWI. WWI changed his point of view drastically also to the degree that as far as I recall he ended his days denouncing Hegel and everything that he had written defending him.

[My own feeling about this is that I think Hegel was more of a philosopher than a political thinker. In terms of politics i think England got it right to a large degree in the 1700's and then the founding fathers of the USA made their improvements on that system.]

There is something odd that I can not figure out. If an animal devours some part of a persons's crops then in the Gemara in Bava Metzia it says you measure one part from 60. That is you do not measure just the amount of that one small area because that will be too expensive if someone would buy it alone. Nor do you measure by the whole field. Rather you go by 60 times that area and then take 1/60 of the crops value.

The question I gave came up a week or two ago when I was looking briefly at the Mishna in Bava Kama where it has the exact same case but it says you measure the amount of a field needed to plant two seahs.[Not like the Gemara in Bava Metzia.] I recall learning that part in Bava Metzia with David Brosnon and then for some reason I looked at the Aruch Hashulchan and saw how he explains Tosphot over there But I do not recall anyone mention the mishna in Bava Kama.

psychotherapy is ridiculous.

Implicit in the Oral and Written Law is a world view of what makes people tick. But to get a full picture it is best to learn Rav Nahman of Breslov who makes the assumptions explicit.

One important point is that mental illness comes from sexual sin. And that there is a correction for that. The Tikun Klali. [Ten psalms 16,32,41, 42, 59,77.90.105,137,150]
See this person write on the problems with the modern approaches
psychotherapy is ridiculous.

In Torah there is a fall of man and of  all creation. So it is not exactly that man is inherently evil but also not inherently good. What is possible to suggest is that there are new stages of consciousness that come into the world at certain periods-- but along with them come the forces of evil to stop the good.
At that makes sense if you see things like  Hegel that the In God there is the Idea [Logos] which is the source of Being. So that is where the center of gravity is--in Logos. The Divine Reason brought down in Plotinus. But with Hegel it is an ongoing process.

Rav Avraham Abulafia

With Rav Avraham Abulafia it is possible to understand some of the good and some of the evils of Christian history. That is if you take Jesus as being from Kindness which fell into Foundation in Emanation, חסד שנפל בכלי של יסוד then a lot becomes clear. At least to me anyway. But the fact that he was from the root of Joseph, at that time meant that that was only a preliminary phase.

In any case you need to look it up in Abulafia's books and also Profesor Moshe Idel to get the whole picture. 

In the Torah, things exist that are not God, but they depend on God for their existence

"אין עוד מלבדו" Or there are no gods besides God.
In the Torah, things exist that are not God, but they depend on God for their existence.

average good physicist has an IQ of 160

I am realizing something true that was talked about on the Reference Frame the most important Physics blog that I know of. and there they discuss IQ and how the average good physicist has an IQ of 160. [That is top level but not in particular up in Mount Olympus.] Undergraduate Physics is more alone the lines of 130.]But my point is built on the idea of learning all aspects of Torah which to many Rishonim include the Oral and Written Law plus Physics and metaphysics--and learning Torah is not just for the smart people. Personally I admit I can not imagine any time in the future when people will learn Physics and Math for their own sake even without understanding just for the sake of the commandment to learn Torah. But that is my opinion anyway and it is what I attempt to do as well as I can with my low IQ. But even a person as dumb as a grasshopper like me--if you keep with it, you eventually understand.
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Here is the commentWell, Edward Witten is easily profoundly gifted. With IQ 160 (SD15), one doesn't breeze through Jackson's Electrodynamics in a week after a history undergraduate degree or take up calculus at age 10. 160 is the average for first-class, but non-revolutionary, physicists - people like Ivy physics professors. For a physics PhD in general the average IQ is already 133 (SD15), so for a string theory PhD, the average would be like 145-160 (SD15). 

The thing is people with low IQ's like me tend to read laymen's versions of Physics. But that is not an option since most laymen's stuff about Physics is profoundly wrong. If you really want the real thing, then you have to learn the real thing. The is no alternative.

I once had a way of putting together Rav Nahman's ideas that helped make clear why Physics and Math are important. I forget now however the main gist of my argument. It I think was that the highest light of creation is the hidden statement where no holiness is easily found. Thus in my own way i understand Physics the be the laws of God in Creation itself, while Torah is the laws of God as referred to human action.

[The most famous source about learning Physics is the Obligations of the Heart חובות לבבות he was not alone. The thing is he goes about it in such a way that it is easy to miss what he is saying. It was more helpful for me when I saw the idea in Maimonides who makes it a lot more clear,]

In my two Litvak yeshivas, it was thought that learning Gemara makes one smart. And that intellect is somewhat fluid. The more you learn Torah the smarter you are. Nowadays this seems in accurate. Still I did see something in learning that I think has to be called help from Heaven. That sometimes a good idea would just come to me out of the blue. Also my two small books on Talmud  to me seem to be gifts from Heaven-since I was never on the level to be writing ideas in Torah in the first place. But somehow it just started after I was learning Gemara in Uman with a friend.

I think that Physics and Math ought to be part of one's ordinary education.

String Theory--Origins

[I think that Physics and Math ought to be part of one's ordinary education. Mainly I saw this in some books of Musar of the Middle Ages. But the message never got through to me. Eventually I started seeing the point. But the way I go about it is different. For me the best way to go about is is to say the words and go on as brought down in the Gemara itself and also in Rav Nahman's Conversations 76.

The two main places in Musar i saw this were the Obligations of the Heart and Sefer HaMidot by Benjamin the Doctor. Later I saw that even in Rav Nahman's view there a difference between false "wisdoms" that he was against [rightfully so] and true wisdoms
[Besides that there is a basic idea in Rav Nahman about the ten statements of Creation and especially the  hidden statement of Creation] have deep holiness. 

Kant said when reason goes into the area of the things in themselves, it gets into self contradictions. So when it comes to religious issues I try to avoid speculation.

Kant said when reason goes into the area of the things in themselves, it gets into self contradictions. So when it comes to religious issues I try to avoid speculation. But I do take it as a fact that there is a kind of Reason that that recognizes universals.
That is a kind of faculty of reason that one knows things to be true as soon as they are understood. And these things are not based on sensory perception.

But also I do take it as a fact that there is a kind of immediate non intuitive knowledge. That was the major point of Leonard Nelson.

I found Leonard Nelson to be very important when I was trying to figure out "things"--I mean world view issues. And his idea of immediate non intuitive knowledge does seem to me to closely  connected with faith.
At the same time I was looking at ideas of Nelson [as presented by Dr Kelley Ross] I also found the web site of Michael Huemer. His idea that reason perceives more things than simple contradictions in language was also very helpful. Putting it together you get the synthesis of Faith with Reason -that is the old synthesis from the Middle Ages.

This is not to take totally the Nelson approach totally, --I still think that Hegel had a lot of important points. But Nelson's critique on the Neo Kant School I think was accurate.

[Kelley Ross also made some advances in this Kant Fries Nelson approach.]

I ought to add that the idea of Nelson [coming from Fries] of immediate non-intuitive knowledge is not the exact same thing as Michael Humer's Reason. The function of Reason for Huemer is much wider than what was assumed by Berkeley and Hume. To Huemer, Reason recognizes universals.[Universals are character traits that things have in common. But it also includes laws of nature or morality.] Immediate non intuitive knowledge is the starting points of reason that one knows without thinking about it--the existence of space and time.

When some kind of problem appears in the text of the Bible like the flood, I take the approach of Isaac Luria that placed the narrative in higher worlds [Emanation]. I think this idea goes back to Plato that there are two levels of reality--the real world of ideas and the shadow world of change.

Lots of problem arise in the religious world when you delve too deeply into it. So I try to keep things simple

With the Ari- the actual simple explanation of a lot of verses comes out to be in Emanation

King David changed a command of the Torah in a permanent way. So you have to say he held like R. Shimon Ben Yohai that we go by the reason for the verses, not by the literal meaning.

The command to build the משכון Tabernacle was not confined to the Sinai desert. If you look at the verses you will see that making the holy Ark of the Covenant and the Table for the Show Bread etc is all on the same level as building the Tabernacle with curtains of goat hairs. That is right away in the beginning of the command to build the Tabernacle, and it all comes under one large commandment ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם "They shall make for me a Tabernacle and I will dwell among them."[and then the verse explains how to build the Tabernacle.] Then look at the end of Chronicles I where King David gives the blue prints to the new Temple that he wanted Solomon to build. There is nothing there about curtains but rather walls.
So we find a later prophet can change things. What is there then that a later prophet can not change? I think it is natural Law.

I mentioned this a day ago when I brought down the Gemara in makot that later prophets reduced the obligations of the Torah until all that was left was faith. וצדיק באמונתו יחיה. If you look at Rashi over there in tractate Makot [last page] you will see he explains that Gemara literally. He says that these prophets saw that if people would have to keep all the commandments, then no one would merit to a portion in the next world. So they lessened the requirements.

The point here is I think you have to say that when the Torah talks about a false prophet, it says specifically one that says to do idolatry. [That is how the verse over there in Deuteronomy actually looks. It only refers to a prophet that says to worship idols.] There is an opinion that a false prophet is one that changes a commandment in a permanent way. But if that would be the case then King David would be a false prophet since he changed a command of the Torah in a permanent way. That does not seem like a likely scenario.
Some of the commands of the Torah it says are forever. But those are not all. Most of the time the Torah simply says to do such and such a thing without giving a time frame.


The gemara in Eruvin also brings down a number of things that later prophets changed like the fact that in the Torah it is stated that children can bear the guilt of their parents and Ezekiel changes that. And besides that he also changes the dimensions of the Temple.

Another thing which I do not think is really that important, but it still seems worth mentioning. That the place of the Temple was not stated in the Torah openly but the simple way of looking at the verses seems to indicate it should be at Mount Eval. This is because in the early verses it says to bring your sacrifices in a place I will choose. And to put the altar of God in a place I will choose. And then later it says when you cross the Jordan river you should build the Altar of God at Mount Eval and bring your sacrifices there. So God did choose a place and it is not Jerusalem. So what do you do with that? I think you have to say what the Gemara says in Eruvin, that later prophets changed things.

I ought to add that it is not uncommon to use verses to prove a point. An example is the פלגש girlfriend that the Rambam forbids to anyone who is not a king, and the Gra counters that with the example of Caleb ben Yephuna from Chronicles I 2:46 who had a few girls friends and was not a king.

after a certain age there is a clear connection between one's looks and one's character.

Abraham Lincoln said after a certain age there is a clear connection between one's looks and one's character.
The actual event was that he said something along the lines that you can tell a lot about a person';s character by their looks. They someone objected. And Lincoln answered that it has to be after a certain age for this to work. Teenagers clearly it does not work with.

I think in Eruvin that says there were things that were decreed by Moses and nullified by later prophets.

In Torah there is one place where a false prophet is dealt with--and the way to know is when he says a prophecy and it does not come to pass within the time frame given by that person. So what about Yona at Ninve? the Sages ask. They answer a negative prophecy can be nullified if people repent. So I ask from Jeremiah 18:9 and 18:10 where it says God can make a good decree and then change his mind if people do evil. But that seems to leave the criterion of the Torah with no way to be evaluated.

The only possible answer I can imagine is that there is a Gemara I think in Eruvin that says there were things that were decreed by Moses and nullified by later prophets. In particular that Gemara brings the example of punishment coming on subsequent generations as brought in the Ten Commandments. Later that was nullified by Ezekiel who said children will not die for the sins of their parents. The Gemara there brings a few more examples.

That is not the only place you see something like that. In the last page of tractate Makot you find later prophets nullifying actual commandments as explained there by Rashi. [Rashi over there says that the reason was that these later on prophets saw that if you would require of people to keep all the commandments, then No One would merit to the next world. That he says is the reason most of the requirements were nullified. Look up the Rashi if you can find a gemara.]

two schools of thought that came from Kant, Leonard Nelson and the Marburg school.

There are two schools of thought that came from Kant, Leonard Nelson and the Marburg school. [Both based on early interpretations of Kant.

If you look at Cassirer's (from the Marburg) critique on Nelson you can see an important point -that a priori knowledge has to be with the limits of conditions of experience. So it looks to me that both schools had some important points.

But what I would like to suggest is that Nelson and Hegel are not as far apart as Nelson thought. To Nelson we have a kind of knowledge that comes not through pure reason and not through experience and has no intermediate point at all: immediate non-intuitive. Though Hegel does not have that he certainly expands the role of reason itself far beyond perceiving contradictions as Kant thought. But Hegel mechanism is far different from Nelson's. It is the dialectic. Which is right I am not sure. But I think all three schools of thought are important.
[As opposed to Twentieth century philosophy which just a result Physics Envy. Empty and ridiculous.]

My search for truth ultimately led me to learn Gemara which which is an area of value of Numinosity. Still that leaves issues of world view aside. Gemara is mainly about how to keep the commandments of the Torah and does not deal with world view issues at length.

So even though it is a great thing to concentrate on one thing at a time and not get too spread out, it still leaves a lot of important questions unanswered. To some degree Saadia Gaon and the Rambam fill gaps left over.
[Though you could argue about that. There is a tendency to seek out in Rishonim hidden truths. Still there is a more relevant issue. It is that world view affects actions. From what I can see the religious world is a disaster zone in terms of decent character traits. You can not be holy if you are not a decent human being first. So in my view, the world view issues have not been addressed well.

To some degree I made up for that by learning the books of Rav Nahman who does deal with the larger issues in a powerful and relevant way.

Today my view is that learning Gemara is one important area of value, but there is a separate area of value that is philosophy. So if I could I would simply plow through the basic works of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Leonard Nelson, Hegel. But there seem to be time constraints. 

The religious world is anti Torah. But they are anti Torah in a way that is disguised.

The Gaon of Villna issued a warning and then later Rav Shach. In fact on the actual letter of excommunication --the top signature is of the Gra. So why is the supposed religious world completely filled with what both these great tzadikim warned against? Because the religious world is anti Torah. But they are anti Torah in a way that is disguised. They camouflage themselves with things that seem  Torah-dik.

However, I do not think the excommunication applies to Rav Nahman for reasons I mentioned elsewhere. So I feel free to follow his good advice and even bring on this blog ideas from him.

My tendency to to make peace between scholars of I can. However there are times when you have to draw a line. The Jewish religious world though it presents this facade of holiness, is very much on the opposite side--the Sitra Achra as can be easily attested for by the countless of people that have been burnt and destroyed by it --those that were seduced by its appearance of holiness.

I usually like to make peace, but for peace you have to be able to tell when something really is a Trojan horse.

I think my own motivation for going to learn in a NY yeshiva was a philosophical quest for the truth.And to some degree I think I found that in terms of numinious value [as per the Kant Fries School]. Learning Gemara is important--but I lost a sense of balance. Getting involved in the religious world tends to make one crazy.

beginning of Reform Judaism.

Rav Nahman was the only one that warned about the Dark Side in the religious world openly. The more I see of it, the more I am alarmed. But it is hard to know what to do. I thought at one point to mind my own business, but it gets worse at an exponential rate and it is "in your face".

Even if you just try to avoid the religious world in total, they still get in through the cracks.

This is probably not a new problem as you can see in the Bible and the false prophets of Ahab. further warnings are given in the Gemara. But Rav Nahman was the first to pin point the issue: "Torah Scholars that are Demons." That would be  right in the beginning of his major book in section 12 and 28. But it comes up in lots of other areas. So what does it mean? In a practical sense I think the meaning is clear. Avoid the religious world. But could Rav Nahman have meant that? Maybe when he was alive he was able to warn his disciples about whom to avoid. But nowadays? How can you tell?

So it is possible to understand the reasons for the beginning of Reform Judaism. It was probably for these exact reasons.

I was thinking of King Yoshiyahu who got rid of all the idolatry in Israel during his reign. He must have been alarmed at the same kind of phenomenon that I am seeing nowadays.


[After I wrote that above essay, it occurred to me why Rav Nahman used the terminology of demons for religious leaders. He must have been referring to their malevolence. -I mean to say that clearly Rav Nahman was basing himself on the Zohar and the writings of the Ari where the subject of Torah Scholars that are demons comes up. But my question is why did Rav Nahman choose to concentrate on that issue and in such a way that sounds not nice? It must be that he noticed what i noticed. In the Jewish religious world the leaders tend to rejoice in doing harm to innocent people that they feel they can hurt without repercussions. While being extra nice to secular Jews they think they can get donations from.

The main subjects emphasized by the Rishonim -that is the Oral Law, the Written Law, Physics and Metaphysics.

The main subjects which I would like to do are the main one emphasized by the Rishonim especially the Rambam--that is the Oral Law, the Written Law, Physics and Metaphysics.

As I am having trouble getting through the basic material I thought at least I might share the idea with others in case they might succeed where I have not.

The Written Law--that is clear.

The Oral Law is the actual written account of the written law in the two Talmuds. Sifra Sifri, and the  Midrashim. But even though I did manage to get through Shas -a lot of it was done without Tosphot. If I could go back and try again today I would do every single Tosphot.

Physics --even though the Rambam was talking about the Physics or Aristotle still I think it applies to today's  also. So that would go through classical, the Quantum, and then Strings. Strings is important because it seems to be the only way to make sense of things like quarks.

Metaphysics would be Plato Aristotle, Plotinus, Kant Hegel.

The way I would do this would be the idea that is brought in the gemara and a book of Musar the אורחות צדיקים and Rav Nahman's idea of just saying the words as fast as possible and going on.

To that I would like to add the idea of שיעורים כסדרם sessions in order. That is you take one book and go through a few pages, then put in a place marker and then take a different book and go through a few pages, etc.
[Not all the above sessions every day. You have to work out how it might work for you. For example you might want to get through the Jerusalem Talmud with the commentaries. So that is something like 40 minutes on one page alone. Then you might want a session in Physics. That might be a math session in Algebra which is a part of Physics. As Michael Humer noted--there are no bare facts. Nature expresses herself in Math and by math. As Heidegger put it: nature itself allows herself to be understood only by a priori knowledge. (And that is a puzzling fact all and in itself.)


But the main goal is to try to finish Shas and all the Oral Law and Physics and metaphysics at least once,

Jacob sent Joseph to see his brothers from Hebron to Shechem. That is about a week of hiking at least! What were the brothers doing up in Shechem? And why send Joseph by himself halfway through the land of Canaan to get a news report?

Eliyahu and Elisha crossed the Jordan River before Eliyahu was taken up into Heaven. They were coming from Jericho. So they crossed into an area that was outside the original border or Israel as defined in the book of Numbers. But was that area occupied by the tribe of Reuben and Gad?

Who was the king of Israel in the time of Elisha? Yoram the son of Ahab? Or Yehu?

Jacob sent Joseph to see his brothers from Hebron to Shechem. That is about a week of hiking at least! What were the brothers doing up in Shechem? And why send Joseph by himself halfway through the land of Canaan to get a news report? And it is not as if the Canaanites were all the friendly by that time after what had happened in Shechem.

Rav Avraham Abulafia

It was a few years ago that I was sitting in Hebrew University and looking at micro films of old manuscripts of Rav Avraham Abulafia and I came across some positive statement  about Yeshua [Jesus]. That was on the day before Hanuka. I kind of froze in my seat because I was not sure what to think of that. I knew that the Rashba [An important Rishon] did not hold of Rav Abulafia at all. But I also knew that the Remak (Rav M. Cordovaro) and Rav Haim Vital were quoting him as legitimate. Also the Chida brings him (Rav Haim David Azulai). It got to be the night of Hanuka and I decided to go with Rav Abulafia even though I knew that would send me on a trajectory that was far from what I had been doing until then.

Why did I decide that? because I figured the Rashba was more of an expert in his particular field of Gemara, while Rav Abulafia was more of an expert in his area.

[Besides that I had been learning the books of Rav Isaac Luria and  Rav Nahman of Breslov already for a few years so I anyway had a kind of mental framework in which it is possible to understand the importance of true tzadikim. I also had been looking at the book of Rav Haim Vital in which the root souls of lots of different tzadikm is brought. That is the book where the Ari was explaining to Rav Haim Vital that the soul of Rav Haim Vital was from Emanation. [Most souls are from Creation]. So I already understood that there can be souls that stem from Emanation.]


I ought to mention that in the meantime someone from Mea Shearim came to Hebrew U. and put all the books of Rav Abulafia into readable script and printed them and you can even buy them in regular Hebrew.

Appendix

[1] Just for some background --the Rashba was a Rishon that had serious issues with Rav Abulafia. But even before I was looking at the manuscripts I was aware of the Rav Haim David Azulai who stood up for Rav Abulafia and that gave a lot of support in that direction. If the Rashba would be expressing an opinion about some passage in the Talmud, that would be more important. But in terms of his opinion about Rav Abulafia, that seems to me to be out of his range of expertise.]

[2] The idea of certain souls being from Emanation is brought down even before the Ari. However Rav Isaac Luria -the Ari- goes into a lot more detail than you can find anywhere else. So there is nothing particularly damming about saying a great tzadik has a soul that is from Emanation (i.e. Divine).

Jordan Peterson

Constellations of belief

Constellations of belief is why people will hold to a given belief even when it goes against common sense--because it is connected with a group he wants to be  apart of or because it is part of a belief system that does have elements of truth.

This is how people fall into evil, but it is also how people fall into good. The reason is there is "out there" lots of constellations of belief. And in no given place is "all truth". That gives a wide range of free will.

In this statement I am trying to give a reason for people holding to things that do not seem to make a lot of sense like the Trinity--because of other things that go along with it like the Golden Rule.
But as Dr Michael Huemer pointed out it is often group identity that determines people's beliefs.

I have had a hard time with this exact subject. And I have no golden rule such as common sense or Reason as to how to judge in this area.
However I do have my own set of rules that I try to hold to in terms of belief systems and rules of conduct. The top one is tell the truth no matter what the consequences are [unless it is a case that can cause harm to others]. I believe that telling the truth always gives me a certain degree of common sense by which then I can tell what world view systems make more sense.

As for world view issues I missed the anti reason movement in the West almost totally. I found rational philosophy to make sense and almost never even saw the 20th century post modern stuff until I already had been learning Plato and Spinoza in High school and elementary school.
But pure Rational philosophy almost has to lead to Kant. It is not just problems in Spinoza himself but also the points raised by Berkeley and Hume. Almost by force one is lead to Kant to find some middle ground. But does that then lead to Hegel as a lot of people thought? I am not sure. To me it seems Hegel is good for Metaphysics and Leonard Nelson is good for epistemology.


 People that are not happy with Hegel I think come from  legitimate complaints about German Nationalism which they think was inspired by Hegel or from complaints about Communism.
But even though Communism as a theory is clearly wrong I can see how it was needed to bring peace and stability to the Russian Empire. You really can not see this unless you have been in former republics of the USSR and see how things really are. If you would be there you would understand what the czars and the USSR were facing. It is nothing like ruling mild mannered white Anglo Saxon Protestants!

[I should add that Kelley Ross also has a Metaphysical approach that is different than Hegel, which is as important as the whole Kant Fries School. But to me it just does not look all that different than Hegel's Metaphysics.]

finding truth in a given world view system

There is a certain n point when you give up finding truth in a given world view system. This is like a person with great expertise in tax laws who has worked for years as a lawyer and a tax accountant.  Then he hears about a politician who has come to town that is going to give  a speech about taxes. So he goes to listen. He expects to hear some relevant  argument about the local tax cuts to conservation groups that  have been harassing the logging industry or such similar themes. But he hears nothing of the sort. All the politician talks about is how he is going to lower taxes and increase spending for teachers and health care etc,. That is nothing related to the issues. Then he goes into the book the politician has written and also finds nothing. So at some point he decides that politician has nothing to say that is relevant to tax issues.

That is like me when I a trying to make sense out of the big world I live in and I hear some promises of any given world view. Then I find out they have nothing to say about important matters.

One reason I think I was particularly attracted to Rav Nahman's of Breslov lessons is that I saw there real insights and advice as to human problems which I did not see in Musar. [Though Shar yashuv in Far Rockaway and the Mir in NY were for me amazing places to learn Talmud, I still found myself feeling empty until I found the books of Rav Nahman.]

Hegel and McTaggart for Metaphysics and Leonard Nelson for "How do we know stuff?" ( i.e Epistemology)

The blogger Mother in Israel mentioned once on her blog about Hegel. I was pretty much against Hegel at the time since I had been learning the Kant Friesian School of Dr Kelley Ross . But for some reason that I have forgotten I started looking at Hegel again. [My first time had been in NY when I borrowed the Cambridge Companion to Hegel].

It is a lot easier to understand Hegel (I must say) if you look at McTaggart. The is an important point that McTaggart makes in his commentary on the Greater Logic right away in the very beginning.It is that The Dialectic is not meant  to derive all laws of Physics by pure Logic. There is an interplay between empirical evidence of Reason.


[Dr Ross expands on the format of the Kant Fries School of Leonard Nelson. Nelson was mainly against the Neo Kant School and had little to say about Hegel.]

To me it seems tragic that Neslon and Hegel are not learned much. It terms of making sense of the world they have much to offer.

What were the sacrifices that Hezekiah [in Chronicles] brought after he cleaned the Temple?

What were the sacrifices that Hezekiah [in Chronicles] brought after he cleaned the Temple? Some might have been burnt offerings. The אלים [sheep over a year old] may have been peace offerings. (They could not have been burnt offerings since if they are sheep they need to be less than a year old.) But what were the sin offerings that he brought of the Tribe of Judah? From what I recall that must have been for just the majority of the tribe of Judah. I mean to say that a sin offering for the whole congregation I seem to recall can be for a single tribe.
[They certainly were not for individuals because they were seven male goats. The sin offering for an individual has to be a female goat.]

book of Kings

In the book of Kings all you really see with King Ahaz (the father of Hezekiah) is that he found a nice altar in Damascus and then asked Uriah the Priest to build one like it in the Temple. But in Chronicles it took the priests and Levis two weeks to clean out the Temple when Hezekiah began his reign. That seems to indicate that the whole Temple area was completely unusable. Also you can see this from the fact that Hezekiah did not want to bring the Passover in uncleanliness as he could have if the Temple had been usable.[ Instead he made the 14 of Iyar the Passover as the Torah requires for people that did not manage to make the first one.

The problem that I see about the selling of Joseph is that in the very beginning of chapter 39 it says the Ishmael[s] sold him to Egypt.

The problem that I see about the selling of Joseph is that in the very beginning of chapter 39 it says the Ishmael[s] sold him to Egypt. But in the  actual events it says the Tribe of Medyans in 37;36 sold him to Egypt. [Not one to the other and then to Egypt.]

But what I think is that the actual selling is attributed to the Mediyans indirectly.

The Trinity

In the Ari [Rav Isaac Luria] we find a few people whose souls were from Emanation--or what would be called "Divine".
But this only really works if you have a Neo-Platonic world view.  In some sense this does not really fit with Aristotle.
[But even with Neo Platonic Thought in itself there are plenty of problems reconciling Christian beliefs. and that is the reason I think Aquinas went to Aristotle.]

In any case what prompted this blog entry is I saw this blog jesus-god-and-an-inconsistent-triad/
and I see that there is a great deal of debate about this.

A further way to deal with this is Kant-simply to say that when Reason ventures into the realm of the dinge an sich [the thing in itself] it gets caught in self contradictions.

In any case I have not thought that believing in the Trinity is in itself any great problem because of the Talmud about the Barber that gave a haircut to Sanherib [I forget the page but I think it is around pages from 98-101. But I might be wrong. In any case it is somewhere in that area] and also the Tosphot in Avoda Zara which deals with this exact issue. [Not that I understood Tosphot very well, but I made a point of learning it with my learning partner so that  I at least get it as well as possible. From what I recall there were a few different ways that Tosphot deals with it.]

[I would normally not be writing on such a contentious issue if I would be having more time to learn Gemara and Rav Shach. But as you know things have been in chaos with me since May and especially my recent arrest. So I suppose it might take some time until I can get down to be doing any kind of serious learning of Gemara or the Avi Ezri for some time--until a miracle appears.]


It is a well known fact, amply borne out by the history of the discussion of the topic, that as soon as one goes beyond the automatic recital of traditional creedal phrases one inevitably leans either in the direction of modalism – the “persons” are simply the different aspects of the divine being and/or activity – or tritheism – there are really three Gods, albeit very intimately connected in some way. (“Swinburne and Christian Theology,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 41 (1997) , p. 54).

St Augustine is the source of some great ideas

St Augustine is the source of some great ideas that got into the work of Jewish scholars during the Middle Ages. However when people borrow from him or any Christina source, the source of the idea is usually not given. But even more than specific idea there is his whole Neo Platonic approach which became part and parcel of approved Jewish thought--mainly starting with Saadia Gaon.

One of the well known ideas of Augustine is that time is a creation. But there are many more.

Torah scholars that are demons. Is there any solution to this problem?

Rav Nahman of Uman made a point about Torah scholars that are demons in a few places. But does not really give a reason for why they appear nor for how to avoid them. Though that is already a remarkable fact that he had the courage to pull the wool out of people's eyes about the problem.
[The idea of Rav Nahman is that the actual human soul of these people is slowly replaced by a demon. The cause of this is unclear, nor is it clear what to do about it.]

I have thought that the problem is that Torah has been made into a paying profession and that invites the demonic Torah scholars in the first place. But  it is not so clear --that answer I mean. It was pointed out to me that the Keseph Mishna brings a defense for the practice of paying for a rav.

So one answer seems to be out, but then what is the trouble? From where does it come and what is possible to do about it? Just hide?
What a lot of secular Jews did at the beginning of the Reform Movement was in fact to simply get away from the religious world. They clearly say the problem so the majority of the Jewish people decided to get out and avoid the Torah Scholars that are demons.

Still that does not seem like the best solution either since we are all obligated to learn and keep Torah.

One other suggestion I have had is to pay attention to the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication. I mean to treat it as valid in term of actual law. But I have not been totally convinced by that myself since even in the Litvak world which attempts to go with the Gra to some degree there also seems to be this same problem, although it is to a lesser degree.
And besides these two solutions nothing occurs to me.

[I have mentioned before the approach of just getting a few tractates of the Talmud and Rav Shach's Avi Ezri and then just learning at home. In fact this seems to be the only possible solution to this problem. After all even in Israel the Dark Side is spreading rapidly -especially in religious areas, so there in fact is no where to escape from it. All one can do is learn Torah at home. And that was always what my learning partner in Uman was telling me, about how great it is to be in a place where there is no religious control.]

יאשיהו King Joshiyahu

יאשיהו King Joshiyahu from what I can see did the most thorough job of getting rid of idolatry throughout all Israel, but after him everything went downhill fast. He was the last of the good kings descended from David. The thing that made him unique was he went all through the Land of Israel, not just Judah.

The story of most of the kings of Judah that were descended from the house of David is a disappointing story, because it all seems to go downhill after Solomon,

modern progressivism is modern "regressivism."

Modern progressivism is modern "regressivism." So what can you do? The Litvak Yeshiva solution is simply to go back to the Middle Ages--and that in fact makes a lot of sense on one hand. But it does not answer the very questions that led to dissatisfaction with scholasticism and religion in the first place.

So my solution is more modest--to find a world view that works for me and helps me make sense of a confusing world.

So I try to hold to a kind of common sense approach of Reid towards philosophy-as are some modern day philosophers like Kelley Ross, Michael Huemer, maverick philosopher and others.

Common sense and balance and to be a mensch are definitely the values of my parents. So what that means in a practical sense is to learn from the greats of the Middle Ages,and also advances from the Enlightenment. How to make sense of the contradictions? Use common sense and balance.

Just to be clear, though I am no expert, I did the usual adolescent reading of Nietzsche, the Communist Manifesto,  and all the usual progressive stuff.  Being not so smart, I could not really see what was wrong with their arguments, but it all seemed way too shallow as compared to other reading I was doing, Plato, Spinoza, Dante, etc. [Now it would be fairly straightforward to see what was incorrect in Marx Freud, Nietzsche etc. But that is not the reason I did not go after them. The reason was they all seemed so "19th century like" obsolete and irrelevant. As if making revolution and sex free was going to solve all mankind's problems. They seemed -forgive the expression--naive.
Just the opposite with Plato and Dante etc. They seemed extremely relevant and deep and penetrating into the core of issues.

You do not have to be an expert

Winston Churchill said something along the lines that everyone needs at least one hobby [or more] I forget the quote. But this brings me to what I have been trying to say about Math, Physics, and Learning Torah. You do not have to be an expert. And besides that Torah was never meant to be a paying profession anyway. And even though one can get paid for math and Physics still than does not mean you need to be an expert.

There is such a thing as doing something "Lishma" for its own sake.

The way to understand this is by the Gra [the Gaon of Vilna]who brings the Jerusalem Talmud that says that every word of learning Torah is worth more than all the other commandments of the Torah put together. [The Jerusalem (jerusalem Talmud) brings this from a verse כל חפצים לא ישוו בה(all desired things can not be compared with God's Wisdom)]
The way to get to the idea that that includes math and Physics is through the rishonim. Most books of Musar from the period of the Middle Ages have physics and metaphysics as being a part of God's Wisdom.


I also have to say that if you learn  bu just saying the words and going on, you will eventually understand a lot more than you can even imagine now. See Talk 76 of Rav Nahman of Breslov.

[I might add that Rav Nahman also makes a good case for why Torah is no supposed to be a paid profession. Even though he does not discuss the issue directly, still he points out the problems created by such a system. In fact, my learning partner in Uman was always telling me how wonderful it is to be in an area with no religious controls.]

to learn in depth

The main way of learning Torah that I think is the best is one that most people coming into the Litvak Yeshiva world find impossible to accept --that is to learn in depth even before you have gone through Shas even once. I mentioned this one time to David Bronson and he agreed with me. The reason is simple experience. If people do not learn "how to learn" [that is how to get into the depths of Talmud] right away, then they never get it.

And I admit my first years in Shar Yashuv were frustrating for this very reason. There was a great insistence to get into the depths of learning the Gemara and Tosphot even before you had even finished the tractate itself.

But how to get into the depths of learning is hard to know. I have mentioned Rav Shach's Avi Ezri which is of course an amazing masterpiece. But the type of learning of Rav Shach is different than what they were doing in Shar Yashuv. Not that they conflict, but they are simply different.
The path of Shar Yashuv was more along the lines of what is called in Israel "calculating the sugia" (sugia means the subject matter right on the page, but it also can mean that subject as relevant to other places in the Talmud.]: getting Tosphot--every word, and not going on until you do. Rav Shach and Rav Haim Soloveitchik are more interested in global issues: how does one sugia compare to another?

Modern pseudo scientists. The pretense of being able to understand the human soul and to diagnose its ills and cure them is as old as medicine itself.

For some reason people think that going to witch doctors will cure their nervousness or arrays of mental problems. Clearly this cure has never happened nor will it ever. Psychology is just a way to milk people out of their money by pretending to know something about the human soul.
It was clear to me that the steam engine model of the human psyche of Freud never had the slightest chance of being accurate. But even more modern models are just as absurd.

[This in itself gives a good reason for people to learn Physics and Math--so that by being exposed to real science they can tell what is pseudo science.]


[I ought to mention that the  pretense of being able to understand the human soul and to diagnose its ills and cure them is as old as medicine itself. And the people that were thought to know something about that were usually on the religious side of things. So the fact that they really knew nothing about what they pretended to know opened to way for modern pseudo scientists to pretend the same thing. Same pretense in new clothing

Rather the Torah comes to reveal objective moral values that are already "out there."

I wanted to defend my point of view a little so that it does not seem like I am just picking up pieces of conflicting philosophies. Even though I am not trying to build any kind of system, I still have a basic world view that I think needs defending.

[This is meant to be a continuation of previous blogs where I mentioned the philosophers that have influenced me.]

So in short:I think there are universals and universals are perceptible by reason. That is reason knows more that how to discern  contradictions. That is about the sum and size of it. Moral values are simply out there and reason applied to moral values perceives them just like reason applied to math perceives certain rules.

So that means that my concept of Torah is like Saadia Gaon and the חובות לבבות Obligations of the Heart that things are not moral because the Torah says so. Rather the Torah comes to reveal objective moral values that are already "out there."

Michael Huemer has a web site paper of how there is no such thing as pure empirical knowledge.You always bring some a priori into it. And I am grateful to Dr. Huemer for his clarity in stating these ideas more or less in the form I just gave them.
But this basic orientation of mine started when I was younger than now. Probably even before high school. But at least I recall I was doing a good amount of reading philosophy in high school.-and even had organized a little group with Wendy Wilson and Roland Hutchinson learning Chinese Philosophy. In any case, I was pretty convinced even back then that something was seriously horrific with Post Modern Philosophy [even though I did not know exactly what.] But I can see why I though to learn Torah in the Mir in NY rather than have anything to do with the terrible stupid philosophies of the twentieth century.


[If the Philosophy departments had been teaching Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, that would have made me more interested but in those days, the world of philosophy  was really full of pseudo intellectuals].


At any rate, you can see in my short three sentences  version of my philosophy that I take the back line of Plato Aristotle, Hegel, Leonard Nelson.--a world that Mind and Being are complementary.And also that reason perceives much more than contradictions in language. Outside of this, most 20th century philosophy I understood even when I was in high school is just lunacy expressed in fancy language.

Russia does not want a Ukrainian naval base in the Sea of Azov

My impression is that Russia does not want a Ukrainian naval base in the Sea of Azov and that Putin was thinking that the Ukrainian flotilla going into the Azov sea was a prelude towards making a base there.

It is kind of the same reason that Kennedy did not want Soviet atomic missiles in Cuba. But I think Russia is even more sensitive about guarding its perimeter--even more than the USA.

Russia thinks that Ukraine can be unpredictable because it has two different kinds of populations. One set is the actual ethic Russians or Russian leaning people that long for the values that made the West Great.The Peter the Great values.[And those people include lots of ethic Ukrainians, not just Russians]. The other set of Ukrainians are the low lives that steal at any and ever opportunity they can find and that population is just starting to show it murderous tendencies after the thawing out period after the USSR.So Russia knows these tendencies are real. It is really frightening to see what lays under the surface in Ukraine, once Russian rule is gone.


I am not sure how to explain another thing I saw in the Ukraine. Almost anything good there was built by the USSR. And the people that are nice and good were often those with Russian blood or at least highly leaning towards Russia.

Kant Friesian School

In terms of the Kant Friesian School of Thought of Kelley Ross, I do not see why there is made such a big difference between that school and Hegel.  Hegel is mainly about Metaphysics and the Friesian School is mainly about epistemology. These are two different areas. And Hegel never claimed to have any answer to the Mind Body problem. He simply is not concerned with it and thinks its is not related to the structure he is trying to build. Clearly he thinks there is no problem in the first place--like Thomas Reid already said.
So we have with Leonard Nelson an answer to the question. Why does that have to cancel out Hegel?

[A difference is supposedly about the dinge an sich[thing in itself]. To Hegel one gets to knowledge about the thing in itself through a dialectical process--it is not by just pure reason as McTaggart makes clear.[It is pure reason applied to Being] And in fact that is how we know stuff. We reason things out sometimes over eons and ages based on a back and forth dialog between what we see and measure and what we think is the reason for what we see.

It is not just by non intuitive immediate knowledge. That kind of knowledge does give a starting point however.



You might think this is not so important to you but  it is to me. I do not have an overwhelming interest in philosophy as a discipline but I do have a need to make sense of the world I live in. And I find a few philosophers that help me do that. Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Kant, Hegel, Kelley Ross. They certainly do not say the same thing, but each one for me adds one extra piece to the puzzle. [I also should add Rav Nahman and the Gra --but not as philosophers but more in the way of filling in the missing pieces. With Rav Nahman I learned the importance of שמירת הברית sexual purity, the tikun klali, learning fast and other things. From the Gra I learned trust in God and the importance learning Torah. From the חובות לבבות (Obligations of the Heart) I learned the importance of learning natural sciences. That however took some time to sink in until I saw the same thing in other rishonim (medieval authorities))] I do not assume any one person has everything right. I try to use common sense to put together a coherent world view.

I ought to mention that Gauss had a very positive thing to say about Fries and David Hilbert had a whole file devoted to documenting his efforts to help Leonard Nelson.

Patriotism and Nationalism:

That one's country comes first is as sound an idea as that one's family comes first: each family has the right to prefer its interests over the interests of other families.  If my wife becomes ill, then my obligation is to care for her and expend such financial resources as are necessary to see to her welfare.  If this means reducing my charitable contributions to the local food bank, then so be it. Whatever obligations I have to help others 'ripple out' from myself as center, losing claim to my attention the farther out they go, much like the amplitude of waves caused by a rock's falling into a pond diminishes the farther from the point of impact. Spouse and/or children first, then other family members, then old friends, then new friends, then neighbors, and so on.

From here:maverick philosopher

Homosexuality

It is more simple if you start with the Old Testament and then work backwards from there. That is what Aquinas does as far as I recall. He starts out that the laws of the Old Testament are binding in the areas of Natural Law. Only the rituals are not in his view. That leaves  the sexual relations in Leviticus 18+20 in their place. This is somewhat similar to R. Shimon Ben Yochai that we go by the reason for a verse, not the letter of the Law. And to the Rambam and all the Medieval Authorities we know the reasons for the verses and they are all natural law except for the Red Heifer.


 So if you would take the Rambam literally along with R. Shimon Ben Yochai, you do not end up all that different than Aquinas.--Though it is hard to imagine how this is possible, but it still is simple logic.

The reason this is more or less like Aquinas is the Rambam says that most of the laws of sacrifices and rituals are certainly Divine, but rituals were given because the the  tribe of people that he names that were in the Middle East at the time that did the opposite. And the sacrifices were given because of the weakness of human nature that people will sacrifice anyway so we might as well do it for God.

The reason that sex issues are unclear today is that Protestants start in the opposite direction from Aquinas. They assume nothing is binding unless they can find it in the New Testament. And that simple fact is from where all the confusion begins--since even if you find something forbidden in the NT, it is easily cancelled, by some other verse.
I have tried to tell Protestants for  a long time that ignoring Thomas Aquinas is not a good idea-but I can not think of any instance when I got through to anyone.

My own appreciation of Medieval thought probably goes back to Beverly Hills High School when I used to learn Dante. But especially in the Litvak Yeshiva World the Middle Ages is considered far superior to anything and everything that came later.

My own feeling about Philosophy however is more based on Kant and Hegel and Neo Platonic thought. But I was and am still highly influenced by The Gra and the Litvak approach to straight Torah which I really hope to get back into some day,
I ought to mention that Hegel has no epistemology. He just by passes the Mind -Body problem. So I do also depend on Leonard Nelson and Immediate non-intuitive knowledge for my world view]

Homosexuality, Idolatry, Murder

Rav Nahman was especially interested in correction for sexual sin which people had been interested in before him. Masturbation (spilling seed in vain) was the specific issue he was addressing, but the fact is that all sexual sin more or less come under the same heading.

The Ari, Isaac Luria, has a few unification for that purpose, but the thing about unifications is they depend on a precondition of attachment to the Divine. Without that they do nothing.

So R Nahman did his own prayer and and service towards God and received the idea of the Tikun HaKlali, i.e. the ten psalms to say that same day that one has sinned. That means the day starting at night and ending 24 hours later at 72 minutes after sun down.

The ten psalms are 16,32.41,42,59,77,90,105,137,150. (With intending the Divine Names אלף למד
אלף למד הי יוד מם)

What promotes this is that I see there is a lot of ignorance out there in terms of sexual issues.

So I thought to write a bit about it. 

The main thing to know is that in Torah there are levels of how severe any particular sin is.
It starts with an איסור עשה,  לאו, לאו שיש בו מיתת בית דין. The first level is a negative command derived from a positive command. Then straight negative commands. Then Negative commands that have the death penalty. Those are usually connected with when it says in the Torah "That soul will be cut off" but not always. It is useful to know this because it gives a simple way of knowing what the Torah considers more severe and what is less severe.

So one one hand we have the argument about a girl friend between the Rambam against all the other rishonim. But though to the Rambam a girl friend is forbidden it comes only as a negative derived from a negative. That is one is supposed to do Kidushin and then Hupa. [The other rishonim allow this but here I am just giving an example of where that category comes up.]
The next level is all the times it says in Torah do not do something but gives no punishment.
The next level is where there is a death penalty attached like in Leviticus 18 and 20. That includes homosexuality [Leviticus chapter 18: verse 22 and chapter 20 verse 13]. But those particular sins have an extra degree of severity because they come under the category of יהרג ואל יעבור, Be killed rather than transgress. That does not apply to any other commands except three: Idolatry, Murder, and the sexual acts of Leviticus 18 and 20.

I hope this short review is helpful for people. [I do quote Rav Nahman because I do not think he came under the (חרם) excommunication signed by the Gra.] That brings up this other issue about idolatry;- that was clearly the main reason the Gra signed the letter of excommunication. And that certainly still applies.

[Having a good idea of the actual legal status of any sin is helpful also, because a lot of times you find statement about the severity of some sin that gives  you the impression that that is the worst of them all. Yet later you find that the legal status is nothing. So you know the previous statement was meant in a spiritual sense.]

Idolatry you know is severe for the reason that it is emphasized in the Torah itself. But also because it is the main thing that the prophets stress. What ever failings the kings of Judah may have had the prophets always stress only one point--did they or did they not do idol worship?

Jordan Peterson tackles gender roles: Don’t ‘socialize little boys to be more like little girls’

https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/11/01/jordan-peterson-tackles-gender-roles-dont-socialize-little-boys-to-be-more-like-little-girls

Religious freedom in the USA I think is built on the model of England during the 1700's.

Religious freedom in the USA I think is built on the model of England during the 1700's.

That is to say that the Pilgrims were not all that tolerant. And it has been pointed out that the Indian that saved the Plymouth Colony was a Catholic. [Squanto was a Roman Catholic.]

Rather, the American Model is taken almost in full from the English Model after 1668. I do not know why in fact this is not emphasized more in USA schools- because to me it seems important. The Constitution is surely a work of genius and perhaps even Divine inspiration. However it did not spring into existence out of thin air.

[There is a limit to tolerance as John Locke brings up in his Two Treaties.] 

I have been looking at Kings and also Isaiah Jeremiah and I had a few thoughts and questions.
First in Jeremiah 18:9 it looks like a positive decree can be turned to a negative one. This seems to go against what the Sages say about the verse in the Torah about how to tell if someone is a false prophet.

Second: to me it is not clear the case with Atalia the wicked queen that ruled over Judah for seven years until she was overturned and the rightful ruler was placed on the throne. It says she was the daughter of Omri who was the father of Ahab. I am thinking perhaps the verse means the granddaughter  because Ahab was at the time of Jehoshaphat. His son was Yoram who married a daughter of Ahab.
Also in the end of Isaiah 56 it looks hard to know whom it is talking about. The non Jews there have they become full Jews? It does not look that way. The reason is the last verse. My house will be a house of prayer for all the nations. Yet in a few verses back they are bringing burnt offerings and also זבחים which means peace offerings


There does also seem to be a limit to religious freedom in Kings. Hezekiah did a lot of effort to get rid of idolatry from the area he was king over --Judah and Benjamin.  Yoshiyahu later made the most powerful effort in that direction throughout all Israel==even areas he was not king over.

When the Rambam says that learning Physics and Metaphysics are a fulfillment of the commands to love and fear God,

When the Rambam says that learning Physics and Metaphysics are a fulfillment of the commands to love and fear God, it is simple to understand what that means in terms of Physics. The things that lead up to Quantum Field Theory and String Theory.
But when he says Metaphysics, it is harder to know what is included. On one hand he makes it clear he is referring to what the ancient Athenians were talking about. So he must mean at least the Metaphysics of Aristotle. But today I think you would have to expand that to Plotinus, Kant, Hegel and Leonard Nelson.

The Old Testament view of Homosexuality.

 The Old Testament view of Homosexuality.. In short it is that there are three things that if one is given a choice "transgress this or we will kill you" that one must choose to be killed rather than do that sin. These three things are גילוי עריות שפיכות דמים ע''ז- the sexual sins of Leviticus 18 and 20, murder, and idolatry. The reason that this is relevant is that homosexual acts are in that category. This seems to me to be relevant to Catholics also from what I recall from my little bit of reading of Aquinas. In Aquinas natural law of the Old Testament still applies to Catholics.

[I was borrowing Aquinas's Summa from a Catholic Church and sadly enough had to give it back before I could do any more study of it than just a quickie review. But from what I recall Aquinas was making a distinction between Natural Law in the Old Testament and Ritual Law. And he was saying that Natural Law still applies to everyone.]
This view of Aquinas is close to R. Shimon ben Yochai that we go by the reason for the verse. דורשים טעמה דקרא. And according to the Rambam[Maimonides] we know the reasons for the verse and he gives them in the Guide for the Perplexed  and the reasons for the verse in the Guide are all Natural Law.



In the Catholic world there is outrage at the dismissal of a group of bishops that wanted to establish some ground rules. To me that seems like a good thing. Outrage at evil I think is healthy. Self criticism is a great thing.
Outrage at evil you can see when the tribe of Benjamin was almost wiped out because of their failure to hand over the murderers of a fellow's girl friend.  [The basic idea was they were protecting the murderers. So all Israel went to war with them]

Cosmological argument

The Cosmological argument

from Plato’s Laws, 893–96; Aristotle’s Physics (VIII, 4–6) and Metaphysics (XII, 1–6).
Also said later by Al Kindi so it is sometimes called the Kalam's Cosmological Argument.
See this paper that brings Plato's view-on pg 253.
People will also recognize this from the Obligations of the Heart.


This is in fact the same argument I have written at the top of this blog. But I usually go to Anselm's Ontological Argument which was proved by Godel.
But even the Cosmological argument I think of in a different way. That is I think of the the beginning of time and space and the laws of physics, not of the beginning of the physical universe.

An evolutionary psychologist

An evolutionary psychologist cannot be as smart as a good theoretical physicist, otherwise he would be one.

The problem with psychologists is not that they are not so smart as they think. It is rather that they are idiots.  


An "idiot" here I use here in the sense of someone of someone with an average I.Q. or lower that thinks they are a genius.

But to be fair this applies to just about anyone in the ludicrous "social sciences". Now there is an oxymoron  if I ever heard one

How to raise kids

However my feeling is that it is always best to start with basic texts--not watered down versions.